


Bowman and Jones

by sciencebutch



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Doctor Who (TV Movie 1996), Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Amnesia, Classic Doctor Who References, Episode AU: s03e01 Smith and Jones, Episode: s03e01 Smith and Jones, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary Eighth Doctor, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, The Doctor (Doctor Who) is an Idiot, but we already knew that, of course, season 3 rewrite with the eighth doctor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25606741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencebutch/pseuds/sciencebutch
Summary: We all know what happens:The Master is executed on Skaro with one request: for the Doctor to take his remains to Gallifrey. The Doctor obliges. En route, the Master manages to escape and infiltrate the TARDIS, causing her to land on Earth.But - what if instead of landing in San Francisco in 1999, she landed in London in 2007?[A Doctor Who season three rewrite, featuring the Eighth Doctor and Martha Jones]
Relationships: Eighth Doctor/Martha Jones
Comments: 21
Kudos: 52





	1. Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> listen. this is poorly written and probably riddled with errors and inaccuracies regarding medical students/med school/hospitals. i wrote the entirety of it at 3 am you see and im too tired to do research
> 
> that's also my excuse for why some lines of dialogue are so cheesy. it's because it's 3 am and i'm probably crying
> 
> a few notes:  
> -it's canon somewhere that the doctor's blood is orangish. this is an important plot point as you will come to see  
> -i sorta play up his nonhuman-ness. because it's sexy. sue me

Somewhere in London there is an alleyway - which, if we’re being honest, goes without saying, really; it’s quite difficult to take a step in London and not be directly perpendicular to at least 4 alleyways at any given time. What _doesn’t_ go without saying, however, is what’s about to happen in this particular alleyway. For, in the next few minutes, quite a lot will occur here, and none of it is particularly believable. 

The time is 9:30 PM exactly. Two humanoids, dressed all in leather, loiter in an alleyway, their black shaded motorcycle helmets concealing any indication of their current thoughts. This doesn’t matter very much, for they don’t have any. They might as well be robots, animated mannequins, created for a single purpose:

To kill _._

At 9:31, a police box materializes in the alleyway with a great deal of noise. The humanoids do not flinch at the conundrum, for they have been told to expect this by their masters. 

At 9:32, the doors of the police box open and a peculiarly-dressed man steps out, only to immediately be shot three times. A long trail of slime worms its way out of the box as well. This slime is not shot, and proceeds to trickle down the alleyway. The humanoids vacate the area.

At 9:36, the wounded man is spotted by a passerby, who - after a great deal of panic - calls an ambulance.

At 9:50, he arrives at Royal Hope Hospital, and is taken into surgery. The procedure is spectated by a group of medical students under the supervision of a man named Mister Stoker. One of the students, a Martha Jones, notes the oddly orangish hue of his blood and wonders if he has an infection of some kind. 

At 9:58, the surgeons decide to insert a camera into his heart to try and find the source of his fibrillation. Unbeknownst to them, the man doesn’t have a fibrillation, he has a different medical problem altogether: he has two hearts.

At 10:04, the man - declared a John Doe, for he has no ID - goes into cardiac arrest, and dies. 

* * *

Later, in the morgue, a different man wakes up.

The first thing he knows is that he’s awake, which is not a very good first thing to know at all, as he’s sure that the line between consciousness and unconsciousness is not as tangible as some would like - for all he knows, he could very well be asleep still, and merely believe himself awake. That would explain the darkness, which there was certainly a lot of. It’s palpable, almost; thick as a pea soup that had gone bad, and it seems to be breathing on him. Flashes of chilliness graze his body, making his hair stand on end. It’s most uncomfortable and he would greatly appreciate it if it stopped.

He shivers, and decides this cold is too cold to not be real in some way or another. If anything, his mind surely isn’t masochistic enough to invent something as unpleasant as this. At least, he hopes it’s not. _What a terrible mind that would be_ , he thinks. _Surely I would have the mind to mind the fact that I would mind that. Or maybe if I had the mind I wouldn’t mind._

He rubs his face with his hands, untangling his convoluted thoughts. His hands don’t feel like his; the skin is all wrong, and the fingerprints are different from what he’s used to--their patterns are whirls instead of whorls. Come to think of it, his face didn’t seem quite right either when he felt it; the angle of his jawline was a few degrees off, and his nose longer than how it should be. Everything feels off, now that he’s noticing it. Like a few rocks knocking a couple boulders loose and starting an avalanche, a lot of thoughts break free of his sluggishness and whir through his head at once: 

_It’s cold it’s frigid it’s like Greenland in here it’s like the sky is burning and the sea is asleep and the children scream and the lovers cry and the poets dream and his_ tea _is getting_ cold _and if his tea is only just now getting cold it must have a very high specific heat and when did he ever have tea?_

_Something is very wrong_ , he thinks, and then wonders if it’s just because he isn’t wearing any clothing, and then wonders why he isn’t wearing any clothing, and then wonders if he can remember taking his clothing off, and then wonders why he can’t remember anything at all.

_Something is very wrong_ , he thinks, and he’s sure he means it this time. 

He sits up very suddenly, and what feels like a thin white sheet falls and crumples in his lap. He thinks it could at least try to do a better job at keeping the cold out, but he appreciates it nonetheless; at least he isn’t completely exposed - most people don’t take too kindly to that, he’s learned. He tries for a second to recall under what circumstances he had learned that particular bit of information, but the memory fails to show. After a second of pondering it, he decides this is one thing he’d rather not remember, shrugs to himself, and starts kicking the door down.

He wishes he had a screwdriver of some kind. Maybe he could loosen the hinges, or something. 

* * *

Martha Jones was in the midst of a night shift when she heard the banging, like metal rattling, echo down the hospital basement halls. 

Martha rolls her eyes, because she hates night shifts, and she hates things interrupting her hating her night shifts. Usually, if she was lucky, they went by without a hitch, and she could stew in her exhaustion and loathing and self pity in peace. Tonight, however, it seemed like luck wasn’t on her side. 

_Whatever_. She’s dealt with worse at worse times, she could suck it up. With a long-suffering sigh, she walks to the source of the sound. 

Martha enters the morgue to see a man wrapped in a white sheet, shivering, by the wreckage of a cold chamber door. On his foot dangles a toe tag. 

* * *

He jumps when someone enters the room - a morgue? It certainly smells and feels like one, he thinks, then wonders how he’d know - and he startles like a cornered animal. He hugs the sheet to himself more tightly.

The person is a doctor - doctor, doctor, why does that word have so much significance? - going by her white lab coat and scrubs. There are no question marks on any of her clothing. He thinks there should be.

“...Sir…? Are you alright?” she asks, though she seems quite un-alright herself - her voice is rather faint. 

He doesn’t think he is, if he’s being entirely honest with himself, but he can’t get his mouth to articulate a response even if he tried; he thinks his voice box is frozen solid in his throat. His teeth chatter as an answer instead. 

The doctor leans over to peer at the damage behind him, and he turns to look as well. The metal door of the mortuary cabinet laying on the ground, cold air billowing over and around it like mist. A new wave of shivers washes over him at the sight.

“How did you…” she begins, and he flinches at the noise, whipping back around to face the doctor again. His hearts - heart? Shouldn’t it be singular? No, no, that doesn’t feel right - pound hard and fast in his chest, drumming on his rib cage. 

He stares at the doctor with wide eyes.

She stares back at him. 

There’s a good long moment of staring, before he breaks it.

“I…” he starts, shocking himself. His voice didn’t sound like how it was supposed to. It was utterly unfamiliar to his own ears - it rather felt like there was a stranger talking through his mouth. “I need help.”

He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know who I am, I--” he cuts himself off with a loud and sudden shout that rasps against his throat like sandpaper. Pain burns in his sternum, a fiery inferno that does quite well at banishing the cold, which, if he's looking on the bright side, he supposes is a plus. He bends over, only to hiss through his teeth when the agony increases. It feels like something is in his chest. He wants to throw up at the thought and feeling of it.

Grasping at it with trembling hands, he pulls it out of his body, “ _What is this_ ?!” he yells, holding out what appears to be a wire and needle to the doctor, his hands coated in fresh blood - _his_ blood. 

It was a distinct, deep orange.

The doctor (who, to her credit, was taking all of this rather well, meaning she wasn’t currently screaming and running out the door) frowns in both horror and contemplation, before her eyes widen and her mouth falls open. 

“No way,” she mutters, her disbelief palpable. “You’re that John Doe - the one that they operated on earlier… you _died_.” 

Apparently not, he thinks. 

“Help me,” he begs, still holding that primitive wiring that had been in his chest, hands still dripping with blood. 

The doctor is spurred into action, “Right, yes, just - hold on a tick,” she says urgently, running out of the room. He watches her go, wraps the sheet tighter around himself. 

The pain in his hearts is already subsiding, somewhat. Probably due to the residual regeneration energy. 

...Whatever that means. 

The doctor comes back with a first-aid kit and a bundle of clothes not five minutes later. 

“I got these from the lost and found,” she explains, slightly out of breath as she drops the stuff on an autopsy table, “I sorta just...grabbed things that looked vaguely your size.”

He wanders closer to inspect the clothing, intent on perusing the shirts and pants (and singular skirt, interestingly enough) she’d brought, oblivious to the fact that his shoulder was very much in contact with hers and that he was practically breathing down her neck. Her head turns to look at him, a single eyebrow raised, before she shrugs and side steps to rummage awkwardly through the first-aid kit.

“I’m Martha, by the way,” she says absentmindedly, “Martha Jones.”

He extracts a Greenpeace t-shirt from the pile and puts it aside. “Nice to meet you, Doctor Jones,” he responds, almost as absentminded as she had been when she’d said it. He glances over at her, his lip turned up slightly.

“Oh,” she laughs, “I’m not a doctor, not yet. Haven’t passed my exam,” she admits. Then, after a beat: “You really don’t know who you are? Do you remember anything?”

He scrunches his eyes shut, trying to retrieve a memory, a vague recollection, _anything_ , from the pool of thoughts in his brain. Anytime he tries to recall something, though, his mind came up blank. Like going fishing in an empty pond.

“No,” he says, dropping the sheet so he can pull on a pair of sweatpants. Martha flushes and whips around to face the door. “It’s just completely _blank_ , like--”

There’s a flash of _something_ , just in the corners of his consciousness, and he grabs at it desperately, pressing his fists to his temples as if it’ll help him reach that particular memory, and--

_He’s in a hospital, somewhere, and there’s a doctor, tall, imposing, but stupid, stupid, stupid, because he just won’t bring him his shoes, and he can’t remember why but he needs them, there’s a deep inherent need like the kind that settles like an anxious pit in your stomach and the doctor tells him to rest but he can’t because where are his--_

“Shoes!” he exclaims, still half naked - he has yet to put on the Greenpeace t-shirt - and Martha starts, her back still facing him. She slowly turns on her heel.

“Shoes?” she asks, wholly perplexed. 

“Yes, my shoes,” he nods emphatically, “Where are they?” 

Martha hesitates. “I don’t know, I’m not sure what they do with the possessions of a John Doe.”

“Ah,” he says, somewhat disappointed, “A shame; I think I needed them for something.” 

Martha glances down at his bare feet. “Probably to wear,” she states dryly. 

He smiles good-naturedly. “Probably.” 

* * *

Martha has to remind the man to remove the tag on his toe, which he does in one quick movement, before crumpling it and shoving it deep into the pockets of his sweatpants. He frowns as he does so, as if he’s expecting the pockets to be larger than they actually are.

He’s very strange, Martha had observed earlier, and observes now. 

He’s also very handsome, in a strange kind of way. He reminds Martha of the Fae, rather, with his long, refined features and hair that seemed to move on its own. In fact, everything about him seems ethereal, from his odd mannerisms to his pointier-than-usual teeth. And of course there are his _eyes_ , glittering puckishly in the dim glow of the fluorescent lights, glimmering like gems. There’s a depth to them that she’d never seen in another person, and if she looks closely, she thinks she can see the irises swirl between shades of green and blue.

Martha tries to keep herself from thinking that he isn’t human. 

It’s getting increasingly difficult.

She ends up herding him to another room, with the explanation that she doesn’t want to be caught with a dead body who wasn’t dead, a broken mortuary cabinet, and a bloodied sheet on the floor. He concedes her point, takes her hand, and leads her out of the morgue with the confidence of someone who knows where they’re going. She barely has time to grab the first-aid kit before he pulls her away.

They wind up in an unused ward. Martha pushes him down onto a bed. He sways his feet as he sits, rocking them back and forth, glancing curiously around the room. 

As she’s pulling on a pair of sterile gloves, he speaks, with seemingly all the sincerity in the world: 

“You’ll make a great doctor someday. You have a marvelous bedside manner.”

Martha grins shyly at the praise, preparing a needle and thread for the wound on his chest. “I haven’t even done anything yet,” she protests with a smile.

“Call it a gut feeling,”

“Uh-huh,” She rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Speaking of gut feelings, how does it feel?” 

“How does what feel?” he looks at her with wide, almost innocent eyes. He’d managed to swipe a pad of gauze from the kit, his fingers deftly folding it into an origami crane. 

“Your chest.”

“Oh!” he exclaims, pulling up his shirt to reveal unblemished skin (aside from the dried blood, of course) “I think it’s healed already.” 

Martha blinks. 

“How…” she begins, her vocabulary hindered from shock, “How?”

He shrugs and looks back down at his gauze crane. He’d undone it and started folding it into something that reminded Martha of a pepper pot. His fingers were very graceful, purposeful and nimble, as if they acted on their own accord. 

  
  


“Well,” Martha says, deciding to continue this habit she’s picked up on accepting everything that’s happened. She’s too tired to make a fuss anyway; besides, maybe it’ll make sense in the morning. “I think it’s a good idea to give you a checkup, even if you’ve miraculously healed.” 

She pulls the stethoscope from around her neck, slides the earpieces in. The pepper pot had been dismantled, and his hands were quickly constructing something else, though she couldn’t tell what quite yet.

“I had one of those,” he muses at the stethoscope as she slides a hand under his shirt. He’s oddly cold - due to his time in the morgue, perhaps? “I borrowed it from Arthur Conan Doyle, should probably return it before he gives up general practice.”

Martha doesn’t really know what to say to that, but she’s starting to really believe that he isn’t human. Or maybe he’s just crazy. Maybe he’s both.

You can be nonhuman and crazy at the same time, right?

...Maybe _she’s_ crazy. 

_Whatever,_ she shrugs to herself, putting the drum of the stethoscope on his chest. 

A rapid pulse greets her ears, an unnatural, stuttering one-two-three-four beat. 

“You’re fibrillating,” she states.

“No I’m not,” he counters, reaching to gently grab her hand and move it further to the right. 

She notices that his skin is very smooth before she notices that his fibrillation had stopped; an ordinary pulse thumped in her ears. Her gaze meets his as he slides her hand to the left. It was normal there, too. 

“You…” she begins, rather lost for words. 

“Indeed,” he says, entirely calm and collected. 

“Two hearts?” she finishes.

“Quite.”

Martha doesn’t notice him slip the origami gauze into his pocket, as astounded as she is. 

At this point, she believes that it would be even _more_ shocking if this person was human, and she wonders: “would it be rude to ask if he was an alien?”

“Depends on how you ask it, I’d say,” the man responds, and she realizes, quite belatedly, that she'd voiced that question aloud. 

“Sorry,” Martha says, blushing rather. Her exhaustion had finally caught up with her it seems; usually her brain-to-mouth filter actually worked.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he says genuinely, his eyes entirely earnest. Then, after a moment of Martha standing there, berating herself, he speaks again: “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Are you going to ask?”

“...Is it okay if I do?” 

“Entirely okay, Doctor Jones.” 

“I told you, I’m not--” Martha sighs, and decides it really wasn’t worth it to argue the point. “Alright, then. Are you an alien?”

“You know, I have absolutely no idea,” he responds easily, and Martha wonders why she’d thought he’d give a straight answer. 

“Well, it’s just that,” Martha begins, “Ever since the Battle of Canary Wharf, and the huge spaceship over London at Christmas, it just seems like the idea of aliens being real isn’t so impossible.”

“I’d consider a spaceship over London at Christmas very solid evidence towards the notion,” he states, his eyes sparkling at her. 

“Oh, I agree,” Martha says, “But you know, some whackos are saying it was all mass hallucinations, or a big conspiracy to cover something up with the elections.”

“You know, you humans never fail to amuse me,” he says rather amusedly, “so desperate to think you aren’t alone in the universe, yet so eager to cover up the evidence that you’re _right_.”

Martha blinks. “ _We_ humans?”

“Ah,” he frowns, confused and pensive. He rests his chin on the heel of his palm, “I wonder why I said that.”

“Freudian slip?” Martha suggests. 

“Sometimes, but you can hardly judge him for that; everyone slips at some point,” he responds absentmindedly, still deep in thought. 

Martha purses her lips, somewhere between being annoyed and amused.

For a minute nothing is said, and the silence is somewhat uncomfortable. She’s standing, her stethoscope resting around her neck, while he sits, contemplative, in an oversized Greenpeace t-shirt and sweatpants with legs that almost fell past his feet. Then he looks up at her from his brooding, surprised, as if he’d forgotten she was there.

“Would you like to sit?” he asks, patting the space on the cot beside him. 

She shrugs mentally, deciding it would be nice to get off her feet, before she hops up onto the bed. He doesn’t acknowledge her presence, having returned to the depths of his mind, or whatever. 

For a minute, nothing is said, but the silence is not as uncomfortable this time. For some reason, sitting next to him puts her mind at ease, and she wonders why she trusts a person she’d only just met - and who didn’t even remember his own name, no less! 

She drifts asleep as she ponders this, her head coming to rest on his shoulder.


	2. In which the characters take a lovely jaunt to the moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Royal Hope Hospital is transported to the moon - how crazy is that!? It's not like you all knew this would happen, or anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> didnt proofread this one bit! you love to see it

In the early hours of the morning, two humanoids - much like the ones we were acquainted with in the very beginning, coincidentally enough - enter Royal Hope Hospital. 

They’re there to protect an alien, who - also quite coincidentally - is a patient of Royal Hope. Her name is Florence, and she happens to be a fugitive of the intergalactic government.

This, as I’m sure you can understand, is never a good thing to be. 

* * *

Martha Jones’ shift ends at 8:00 AM. Royal Hope Hospital is transported to the Moon at 7:43 AM. It’s a rather nasty inconvenience for multiple reasons. 

She wakes up a few minutes before the fact to the sound of pouring rain. Her cheek is resting on something cold - not the uncomfortable sort, mind; it feels a lot like when she blearily flips her pillow over to the cool side in the middle of the night. She does feel quite stiff, though, and her neck is bent at a weird angle for some reason, and--

Martha sits up to find the man from last night staring kindly at her. “I was wondering when you were going to wake up,” he says as a greeting. “It’s very noisy weather we’re having, I’m surprised you slept through it for as long as you did.” 

As he said it, Martha realizes that the rain  _ was  _ very noisy, almost drowning out the raucous booming of the thunder, which was a constant low rumble in the background. 

“S’pose I was just tired,” she yawns. “Sorry I fell asleep.”

He hums. “Perfectly fine, I assure you. I spent the time in deep, and profound thought.”

Martha almost laughs at the phrasing, before realizing he’d said it with no degree of sarcasm. She’d noticed that he has a very posh way of speaking, all noble, gentlemanly - some would say pretentious, even. His accent mixed with his long curls put her in mind of a character straight out of a Jane Austen novel, or something. 

He leaps off the cot and holds his hand out for Martha to take. She does, and he helps her down. While she hardly needed such a gesture, she appreciates it; she was still a bit wobbly on her feet after her nap. 

“Why, thank you, kind sir,” she jokes.

“My pleasure, madame,” he responds, bowing deeply.

Martha laughs, and she can see a smile growing on his face as he raises his head. 

“Did you remember anything while in your ‘ _ deep and profound thoughts’ _ ?” she raises her fingers in air quotes. 

He’s gone to look out the window, oddly enough - how he could see anything past the rain was beyond her. “Hm?” he asks, distracted, “Oh, yes!” he says, and doesn’t elaborate further.

Martha waits for a second to see if he will. “Well?” she questions when it’s obvious he won’t.

“Is it normal for rain to fall upwards?” 

“...What?”

“Ah, I’ll take that as a no, then,” he says, “Here, come look at this.” 

He waves a hand in a “come here” gesture. Martha sighs and approaches the window. 

The rain was going up. 

“Oh my God,” she says, “the rain is going up.” 

Suddenly, the ground shakes as the entire building wobbles to and fro violently, and Martha can’t help but lose her footing and stumble. The man catches her in his arm, his other hand employed with the task of gripping onto the windowsill.

“I’ve got you.” Martha almost can’t hear him over the sounds of the rain and the rumbling of the hospital and she’s sure the whole building will collapse and then--

It stops. 

She looks up from his chest, releases her fists from where they’d gripped his shirt, and sees the Earth.

As in, the planet. The planet Earth, suspended in a pitch black medium speckled with far off stars. The horizon is gray, dotted with craters. 

“We’re on the Moon,” she states faintly, dread and fear filling her chest and making her legs shake. She wonders if he’ll mind if she grabs onto his shirt again to keep steady. 

“We’re on the Moon,” she says again, in case he missed it the first time, “We’re on the bloody Moon.” 

“Come on!” he exclaims, grabbing her hand and dashing from the room. 

The halls are crowded, filled with patients and doctors and nurses, all wandering around with panic in their eyes. He’s very good at dodging through them, weaving under and around people with a practiced expertise. 

“Where are we going?” Martha shouts at him over the din.

“Balcony!” he yells back, before coming to an abrupt halt. Martha, unaware they were stopping, maintains her current velocity and runs into his back. He turns around, a sheepish expression coming across his face. “I just realized, I don’t know where--” 

Martha rolls her eyes. “Oh, come on,” she says, leading the rest of the way to the patient’s lounge. 

It’s quieter in there, all the patients having been redirected back to their beds. They stand before the two doors that lead outside. 

“How are we breathing?” Martha asks him, her heart pounding from exertion and nerves. “The windows aren’t exactly air-tight, but all the air hasn’t gotten sucked out.”

“Excellent question, Doctor Jones,” he responds. “And the very reason we’re about to go outside.” He shoots her an expectant sideways glance, as if he was curious as to how she’d respond..

“Okay.”

“We might die,” he says.

“We might not,” she responds, and realizes that her heart’s also pounding from exhilaration.

His mouth slowly widens into a grin. His eyes are alight with enthusiasm, excitement, the burning of adrenaline, and Martha thinks hers are much the same. She wonders why he’s taking this all so well. Then she wonders why  _ she’s _ taking this all so well. “Excellent,” he says, breezily, “Let’s go then.” 

* * *

“We’ve got air, how does that work?” Martha ponders aloud. The pair of them are leaning on the balcony railing, enjoying the scenery. 

“I’ve learned not to, ah, how does that proverb go? Look a gift horse in the mouth.” 

“Mm,” she hums, staring down at the Earth. “My family’s down there.” She says it as she remembers it - she’d been so caught up in everything that she didn’t even  _ think _ \-- “My parents, Tish and Leo…”

“Siblings?” he’s turned his head to look at her.

She nods, tight-lipped. “Wonder if they’ve heard.”

“Probably.”

“I hope they’re not too worried.”

Silence. Martha watches the Earth while he watches her. “Would you like to go back in?” he asks gently.

“No way,” she responds, resting her cheek in her palm. “I mean, we could die any minute, but all the same, it’s beautiful.” 

“You think so?” he raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah. I mean, how many people want to go to the Moon? And here we are.” Martha smiles, glancing at him.

“If only it were under better circumstances.” 

Martha shrugs. There’s another moment of companionable quiet. “I’ve been wondering what to call you. Can’t keep referring to you as ‘the amnesiac’,” she points out. 

“Whyever not? I think it adds an air of charming mystery about me.”

Martha scoffs and tries to hold back a laugh. “Yeah? How are you gonna convey “dark and mysterious” with an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants?” 

He peers down at his current ensemble, then looks back up at her. “Hey!” he exclaims, affronted, though there’s mirth in his eyes. “I’m working with what I’ve got!” Martha thinks she’d heard some Scouse creep its way into his accent with that exclamation. “If you really wanted me to succeed, perhaps you should have brought me something more fitting towards that particular aesthetic.” 

She snorts. “I’m afraid not many people come to the hospital dressed in an outfit straight out of the Victorian era, let alone lose their clothes afterwards.” 

His eyebrows furrow. “Now there’s an idea,” he mumbles. 

“What is? Losing your clothes?” She regrets saying it as soon as it left her mouth. Her cheeks heat up, and she desperately hopes he doesn’t notice. 

He doesn’t. “No, no, Victorian era-style clothing,” he says, “Perhaps even Edwardian.” 

Martha wonders what it is exactly she’s wrought. “What--”

“You can call me John, by the way,” the wild change in subject back to the original topic gave Martha whiplash. “It’s what I normally go by when I’m undercover.” 

Martha blinks. “Okay,” she speaks, deciding not to question it, “John.”

“Now,” he exclaims suddenly, “Doctor Jones, what exactly do you think is keeping all the air in?” 

“It would have to be a force field, wouldn’t it? Or a really clear glass dome, otherwise the air would’ve dissipated.”

John picks up a small pebble. “Let’s test your hypothesis, though I sure hope it isn’t the latter,” he says with a wink as he throws the stone off the balcony. It bounces off an invisible wall with a jolt of static, and falls the remaining story to the ground.

Martha stares at it. “But if that’s like a bubble sealing the air in,” she starts, “That means it’s the only air we’ve got. What happens when it runs out?” 

“I’d hazard a guess that everyone will suffocate,” John says, probably  _ too _ nonchalant. Martha swallows thickly. It feels like the stone he’d thrown had just been shoved into her stomach.

“That’s horrible,” she says, thinking of the thousand people in the hospital right now, “Who would do such a thing?” 

“Them, probably.” says John, pointing just over the horizon, where a trio of spaceships, rather shaped like skyscrapers, land with a big cloud of dust. A line of aliens emerge, and begin marching in their direction.

“Judoon,” John says. Then, after a second: “Wonder how I knew that.” 

* * *

Florence enters the office of Stoker, some piddling old human who speaks like he knows everything. Psh, sure! She bets that if he even laid eyes on the techno-clouds of Irisis 5 he’d keel over on the spot. Not her, though. She thinks techno-clouds are wholly  _ mundane _ . So there.

It’s not like she’ll be able to test that claim, though, as he’s going to keel over very soon for a totally different reason.

“Mister Stoker,” she says, trying to make herself look and seem as pitiful and weak as possible - it’s not hard; this body practically makes that the default! “I’m sorry, I didn’t know who else to ask, but can you help me?” 

Stoker, to his credit, is calmer than all the other delicious humans running about in the hallways. “I think we’ve gone beyond aspirin, Miss - er--”

“Finnegan,” she smiles warmly. She can  _ smell _ the blood in him, throbbing into all the nooks and crannies of him, filling him with tasty salts and delicious fats. She licks her lips.

“Names,” he says, “What are names now when something unnamable is marching towards us across the Moon? And a body’s gone missing in the morgue? Two more years, I thought. Two more years and then retire to Florida. But there is Florida, in the sky. I can see it. My daughter, she's still in university. I am never going to see her again.”

Florence rolls her eyes. Humans and their sentiment - pah! If she’d been so soft-hearted she’d never have lived to be two-hundred. Feelings have no place in a plasmavore’s life, that she knows for certain. 

“But I need help, Mister Stoker,” she tries to fill her voice with all sorts of pleading and weakness and desperation. It’s very hard, because she can’t recall a time when she’s ever felt such a way in her life. 

“I can’t help you,” he says, and he manages to make himself sound more hopeless than she did. Ugh. Florence will be glad when he’s drained and gone.

“Oh, I think you can,” she sneers, calling her boys into the room. Simple Slabs, dressed all in black leather. Empty of anything for her to feast on, but that was okay; they were rather scrumptious to look at. 

Stoker doesn’t get the memo that he’s about to die, apparently. “What do you two want? I’m afraid it’s rather late to sign for anything.”

“These are my boys,” she announces, all her old woman feebleness gone. Florence gives Stoker a very patronizing smile. Poor thing. “I don’t like to get my hands dirty, you see.”

He didn’t see. “I’m sorry?” 

“I need blood, Mister Stoker,” she snaps and the Slabs descend upon him, grabbing his biceps and holding him to the floor. He protests, but they don’t let up. Her boys are strong, that’s why she hired them. 

“It could be anyone’s blood, really, I’m sure everyone’s veins are so full of delicious lipids and proteins and  _ salts _ , right about now. Adrenaline does add a certain savory  _ tang _ . But I think you’d taste the best, with your heart full of your pretentious vintage wines and Michelin star sauces.” 

Florence licks her lips. She was starting to drool.

“Who are you?” Gasps Stoker, still struggling. 

“Oh, I’m a survivor, Mister Stoker. At any cost,” she reaches into her handbag and pulls out a plastic straw. “And look,” she says with glee, “I even brought a straw.” 

Stokers screams echo through the hospital. They’re almost as delicious as his blood.

* * *

The Officer enters the human building. They all scream and run, full of cowardice, scurrying like the blos-shos in the swamps of Judoonia. 

“Blos so folt do no cro blo cos so ro,” the Officer says. The rest of the force draws their weapons.

A suspect meekly walks up to him and says something in its ugly little language. The Officer pushes it against a wall and scans it with his assimitech.

“Language assimilated,” he says, “Designation: Earth English. You will be catalogued.” 

The Officer scans the suspect. 

“Category: human,” he announces with no surprise. No other species would act so pitiful. “Catalogue all suspects.”

* * *

Unbeknownst to the Judoon, as they’re unable to look up, John and Martha watch the commotion from above. 

“What  _ are _ the Judoon?” Martha asks. 

“Police for hire. Interplanetary thugs, really,” he says as he watches the Judoon spread out below, scanning and cataloguing humans.

“Like normal police, then,” Martha points out. John glances at her and smirks. 

“Exactly.”

“So what are they doing here? Why’d they bring us to the Moon?” 

“I’m assuming that since they’re making a catalogue, they’re searching for someone who isn’t human,” says John. 

“We should get you away from here, then.” 

“Why?” he asks, utterly befuddled. Martha gives him a look, and his eyes widen. “Oh! Right.” 

* * *

“Troop five, floor one. Troop six, floor two. Identify humans and find the transgressor. Find it,” orders the Officer, grabbing a random suspect. “Prepare to be catalogued.”

The first human the Officer had catalogued speaks, and if the Officer had the ability to roll his eyes, he would. “Do what they say. All they want is to shine this light thing. It's all right. They're not going to hurt us. Just listen to them.”

A suspect smashes an object over the Officer’s head and he turns around to face the criminal.

“Witness the crime. Charge, physical assault. Plea, guilty. Sentence, execution.”

The Officer shoots the criminal with his heat ray, leaving a pile of ashes underfoot. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” says the human.

“Justice is swift,” he responds.

* * *

They’re in the basement again. John is looking for his shoes, or something. He’d been muttering, and Martha hadn’t really heard him over all the chaos. 

“John!” she shouts. 

“Hm?” he stops cold, and Martha runs into his back again. 

“What are we  _ doing _ ?” 

“Looking for my things, Doctor Jones! My shoes - though I don’t know if they’ll fit, something tells me I went up a size or two - yo-yo, pocketwatch, and…” he clicks his tongue, hitting his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Something else, something important, but I can’t --” he groans, “If only I could remember! Wait - wait wait wait, yes, it’s coming to me now, I need a - a screwdriver, yes!”

His eyes are wide, crazed almost, blazing with excitement, and Martha can’t help but return the expression, before realizing what it was exactly he’d said. Her face becomes a confused grimace. “Screwdriver?” 

“Yes!” he shouts, “Now why would I need that?” 

She’s really quite frustrated now. There are aliens on the floor above them, scanning her coworkers and patients, and there’s an alien fugitive, and a limited amount of air, and he’s looking for a  _ screwdriver _ ? 

“John! Focus! We’re running out of time!” There couldn’t be much air left now. 

He doesn’t respond. In fact, he isn’t even looking at her anymore. His gaze is directed over her head, and she turns to see what caught his eye.

There’s nothing there. She wants to scream. Why can’t he just pay  _ attention _ ?! He obviously knows what’s happening - well, knows more than she does, at least - so he needs to help her fix this before they all die! 

“Doctor Jones,” he says at last, “Is it normal for the doors of the blood bank to be left open?” 

“No - what?!” she turns around again to see that the blood bank doors were, indeed, ajar. “Why does it matter?” 

“Everything matters,” says John wisely. “A doctor or nurse would have shut the door behind them, so it probably wasn’t a hospital employee that entered.” 

Martha sighs. “John, I’m sure shutting the door would’ve been the least of anyone’s worries,” she points out. 

He purses his lips. “Good point,” he concedes. “Are there records anywhere? Anything that says what’s been taken and when?”

“I could ask Mister Stoker.” She still doesn’t understand his logic. “Why does it matter?” 

“Good, good.” John nods, “I can try hacking into a computer if that doesn’t work - Doctor Jones, do you trust me?” 

Martha doesn’t even know him. Hell, he doesn’t even know  _ himself _ . But there was something about him that just seemed... _ genuine. _ He was kind, smart - even if he didn’t seem it a lot of the time - and he let her sleep on his shoulder for  _ hours _ without moving. 

This was a bad idea. “Yes,” she breathes.

“Really? I’m flattered,” he says, all bashful. Then, as if a switch had been flicked, he became entirely serious. “If it helps any, I trust you as well, Martha.”

It was the first time he’d said her first name. 

“You’re the first face this face saw,” he states it like it’s the most important thing in the world. And even though Martha doesn’t understand what it means, she gets the sentiment. She nods, wordless. 

John pulls something out of his pocket then, and Martha recognizes it as the piece of gauze he’d been playing with last night. He gives it to her, saying: “Now we match; we each have two.”

Then he taps the side of his nose, winks, and runs off to look for a computer. 

Martha looks down at the gauze in her hand. It’s shaped like a heart. 

She swallows, and brushes it with the pad of her thumb. Carefully, she tucks it away in her lab coat pocket, before heading off in the opposite direction. 

To Stoker, then.


	3. How to Make a Killing in Radiation Poisoning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's short but i wanted to maintain my posting schedule of Thursdays so!

Stoker is dead. 

Martha finds this out by entering his office and seeing him dead, which is really, if you think about it, how most people are found dead. His body is surrounded by two men in leather and an old woman with a bloodied straw. 

It’s odd, but definitely not the oddest thing she’s seen today. Martha does get a gut feeling that it might just be the most dangerous thing she’s seen today though, even when juxtaposed with the space rhinos and moon hospitals. 

The old woman - who, if Martha recalls correctly, is a patient by the name of Finnegan - shouts “Kill her!” 

Martha correctly deduces that now would be a good time to run. 

So she does.

* * *

She finds John easily enough, meaning she ran into him - quite literally. Martha had been sprinting down the hallway and, as distracted as she had been by the sight of her professor’s corpse as well as being pursued by people who wanted to kill her, she hadn’t seen John step in front of her. So she careened right into him.

John places his hands on her biceps to steady her as she reels back from the indent she must’ve made in his stomach. “Fancy bumping into you here,” he quips, and if she hadn’t just been running for her life she would’ve been charmed.

“I found her,” she pants. 

He frowns. “What do you mean?” 

At that moment, the door to Stoker’s office is kicked down, shattered into splinters under the boots of the leather-clad men. They spot Martha, and sprint towards her.

“Ah, I see,” John slips his hand into hers. “Run!” 

They do, and end up in Radiology. John hops behind the radiation screen as Martha locks the door and begins fiddling with controls. Martha hopes to God he knows what he’s doing. 

“Find something to barricade the door!” he shouts. 

Martha looks around desperately, only to see a chair and a cot on wheels. For the sake of appeasing him, she pushes the chair against the door, wedging it under the handle. It won’t hold under whoever those men were, she knows, but still. 

She joins him behind the radiation screen, and John glances up at the shoddily guarded door, then raises an eyebrow at her. 

“There’re two pieces of furniture in here, what was I supposed to use?” she questions, somewhat aggravated, and his eyes sweep over the empty room.

“Fair point,” he concedes, then points at a button, labeled  _ power _ . “When I say the word, I want you to press this.” 

Martha nods. “Good,” he smiles, then runs out to the x-ray machine.

One of the leather-men enters then, breaking the lead-lined door off its hinges, and Martha is rather reminded of John standing in front of a dented mortuary cabinet, before he aims the x-ray machine at the man and shouts, “Now!”

She slams her palm on the button. There’s a loud whirring as the machine activates, then fires. Martha recoils as the man freezes and falls to the floor.

“What’d you do?” 

“I increased the radiation by...a rather large amount, not really sure how much exactly. All sort of a blur, you see.”

A bit of panic spikes through Martha then. She can feel her heart skip a beat. “Isn’t that going to kill you?”

“No, it’s only roentgen radiation. Child’s play - quite literally; I remember being rather fond of the roentgen bricks in the nursery.” He smiles somewhat disarmingly at her. “You can come out now, I’ve absorbed it all.” John huffs and jumps in place, stretching his neck. “It really gets the blood pumping, though,” he gasps and hisses, as if strained. 

“Are you alright?” Martha asks tentatively, emerging from behind the radiation screen. 

“Ah, yes. It was a significant dosage, I should probably expel it before my blood boils--”

“ _ What _ ?!” 

“Here, hand me that pencil,” he says, and Martha complies, very worried indeed.

He spins it in his palms and stands very still. Shuts his eyes. Inhales. Exhales. 

Then the pencil catches fire, and he yelps and leaps back, dropping it instinctually. It disintegrates before it even hits the floor. John stares at it as he wipes his hands. “That’s that,” he says. 

“...You alright now?” Martha hesitates to ask.

“Right as rain,” he declares. “The downward falling kind, that is.” 

Martha doesn’t indicate she’d heard him, looking down at the motorcycle man instead. “So, what was it?” she nudges it with her foot. “This thing.”

John hums. “Just a simple slab. A slave drone.” he crouches and pokes it. “It’s made of leather, all the way through. Someone must have one hell of a fetish.”

“It was working for that woman, Miss Finnegan,” Martha says. 

He hops to his feet. “Who?”

“She was a patient, but she was in Mister Stoker’s office, and she had a straw that was all bloody, like she was, well, drinking his...blood.” 

Frowning, John rests his chin in his hand. “Hmm...It is a bit disconcerting, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I would say so,” She says it with no small degree of sarcasm, which John doesn’t register. He nods sagely in response, as if she had just spoken a great deal of wisdom. 

“I would as well. Imagine snacking during this, especially in such a conspicuous way.” He scrunches his lips, tapping them with his pointer finger. “Unless…”

Martha waits for him to continue.

He doesn’t. 

“Unless what?” she prompts. 

“Unless…” his entire face brightens with an epiphany then, his eyes widen and his mouth cracks into a big grin. Martha can’t help but echo his expression. “Yes! Yes, that’s it!”

“What is?” she asks excitedly, leaning in closer - she can’t help it, his moods are infectious. 

“The brontosaurus is large and placid...and stupid! Yes, that’s what I am! Stupid, stupid! I’m quite stupid, Doctor Jones - do you know why?”

Martha’s face had fallen when he began spouting nonsense. Just when she thought they were getting somewhere. “Because you’re talking absolute gibberish?” she asks dryly, crossing her arms.

He doesn’t seem to notice her insult. “No! Because, Martha, she wasn’t snacking - she was  _ assimilating! _ ”

“I’m sorry?”

“If she can assimilate Mister Stoker’s blood, mimic his biology, she’ll register as human to their scanners,” he explains, face grim.

Something dawns on Martha. “So  _ that’s _ why the doors to the blood bank were open!” 

John puts both hands on her shoulders, delighted. “Exactly!” Martha thinks he can see pride in his eyes. “You see?” 

“See what?” 

“I told you you’d make a great doctor one day.”

“I’d hardly consider helping intergalactic police apprehend a blood sucking alien the job for a doctor.”

“Really?” he asks innocently, “I consider that all part of the job description.” 

Then, he smiles and takes her hand. “Speaking of which, come on. Let’s go help some intergalactic police apprehend a blood sucking alien.”

* * *

If Florence knew what both cats and cream were, and had a general grasp on common English idioms, she would say that she rather feels like the cat that got the cream. Victorious and, of course, really quite full. Mister Stoker had proven to be a feast indeed. She had been worried, at first, that he would be a let down -- seniors very often were, what with their anemia and low blood volume and arteriosclerosis. 

Florence wipes the red from her lips, (even with a straw, she was ever the messy eater). Indeed, Mister Stoker was very filling, and she’s thankful for the meal, as always. But there was another reason why she had chosen to eat just then.

Her cells shift as they extrapolate genetic data from Mister Stoker’s leukocytes, adapting by conforming to every little nucleotide’s directions. She shivers; losing a couple pairs of chromosomes always leads to the strangest sensations.

A Judoon marches in front of her, and she stands before it without fear. 

“Prepare to be catalogued,” it says. She straightens her hospital gown. She has to look nice for this momentous occasion. 

“Human.” 

Florence tries not to smile too wide, lest they see the blood on her gums.

* * *

John and Martha watch this all happen as they hide behind a water cooler, Martha’s head peeking comically over John’s. 

She turns to look behind them, and sees the other motorcycle man -- slab, thing. She urgently pats him on the shoulder to get his attention. 

“Hm?”

“Look!” she whispers, gesturing with her head to get him to look down the hallway. 

He does, then makes an exaggerated distressed face up at her, inhaling through his teeth in a hiss.

“How about we run when its back is turned?” 

He nods. “I like your thinking.” 

They stand up slowly, so as not to draw attention to themselves. As they do, a scanner appears over John’s forehead and beeps. 

“Non-human,” the Judoon states.

“Ah. It’s always good to know for certain, isn’t it?” he manages to get out before Martha grips his hand and pulls him down the hallway, right past the slab - who joins the chase as well. 

_ Oh, what does it matter? The more the merrier _ , Martha thinks, a little hysterically.

They manage to dodge the Judoon’s blast as they run up a flight of stairs, and as they turn down random corridors and dodge and weave around people loitering in the halls, they lose both their pursuers. For a moment, they stop running, and Martha looks around. 

People have begun to slump against the walls, sitting on the floor with their heads turned upwards, as if they thought all breathable air was at a higher altitude. 

John’s face turns grim. Martha’s turns concerned. 

“They’ve done this floor already, they shouldn’t be retracing their steps anytime soon...I hope.” His voice is lower than it usually was, more serious. 

Martha addresses a nurse who was in the process of giving a patient an oxygen mask. “How much oxygen is there?” 

“Not enough for all these people. We’re gonna run out,” she says. Martha can see the dread in her eyes, and she tries not to echo it in her own. 

They continue walking down the hallway towards Stoker’s office. 

“How are you feeling?” John asks, “Alright?” 

Martha swallows thickly and nods. “I’m running on adrenaline.”

John says nothing, but Martha thinks she felt his hand squeeze hers. 

“What about the Judoon?”

“They have big lung reserves, if I remember correctly.” 

“...What about you?” 

John glances over at her and smiles. “I should be fine, I think. Something about my respiratory system.”

“What? Do you have four lungs as well as two hearts?” Martha teases, trying to lighten the mood.

He snorts. “No, I don’t think so.”

Martha comes to a halt once they arrive at Stoker’s office. “This is it,” she says, swallowing. The door is slightly ajar, and Martha can see Stoker’s shoes through the crack. John pushes it open a bit more, peeking in.

“It’s empty,” he says, looking back at her. 

They enter the room. Stoker’s body is white as marble, as if all color had been sucked out of him - which, she supposes, it had. 

John crouches over his body. “She sucked him dry; not a drop of blood left in him, I’d reckon. I was right. Plasmavore, that’s what she is.” 

Martha bites her lip and looks down at Stoker. He was a good professor, a good man. “Why was she on Earth?”

“Hiding, I should think, if the Judoon are after her.” He pauses. “What is she doing, though? She isn’t safe; the Judoon could execute us all.”

He stands up and turns towards the doorway. “Let’s go,” he says.

“Hold on.” 

Martha shuts Mister Stoker’s eyes. 

* * *

John is skip-jogging down the hall ahead of Martha, clutching at his curls. “Think, think, think,” he mutters, then whips around to face her. “Think, Martha!” 

Martha does. “Maybe she’s hiding?” 

“Hiding won’t work when all the oxygen is gone,” he says. He rubs his face in his hands and turns again. “If I were a fugitive trying to escape the planet…”

His eyes light up. “Of course!”

“What?” 

Whatever response he was about to say is cut off by the screams and heavy-footed marching. 

“Find the non-human. Execute,” demands a Judoon. 

“Oh dear,” John mumbles. He looks Martha right in the eyes then, and she can see that they really  _ do _ swirl - vacillate between grey and green and blue, like a kaleidoscope. “Martha, I have a plan.” 

He doesn't enact it. “Okay,” she says.

“I need time, I need you to hold them up.”

“How?” 

“That’s what my plan is about,” he says. “Partially.” 

“Okay,” she repeats. 

“You’re not going to like it,” he begins. 

Martha stands on tiptoes to peer over John’s shoulder. The Judoon are getting closer. 

“Doesn’t matter.” The suspense is overwhelming, potent, practically seeping through her pores. “Do it.” 

John nods. “Martha, can I kiss you?” 

That was perhaps the last thing she was expecting to hear. “What?” 

“Well, I need to leave a trace of non-human biodata on you, you see, and - well, I suppose I could lick you, but I had a hunch that you would like that even less than a kiss, so--”

He’s cut off by Martha’s lips on his. His eyes are open, for a moment, wide with shock, before they fall closed and he raises one hand to cup her jaw and another to the dip between her neck and shoulder and--

They separate with a  _ smack _ . John blinks rapidly at her, frozen.

“Go!” She ushers, blushing slightly, trying to suppress the smile that wanted to possess her mouth. 

He nods, somewhat dazed, before running down the hallway, muttering: “Right, yes, yes.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the plotline of smith and jones should be concluded by the next chapter :)


	4. If there was a Judoon and a plasmavore on the moon and one killed the other with a gun would that be fucked up or what

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AJAB (All Judoon Are Bastards)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was hard to write, just cuz i had trouble doing the dialogue for the scene in the mri room O.O i hope it doesnt seem too stilted/awkward/ooc
> 
> i'm moving into college on the 26th so the next chapter MIGHT be a bit late, jsyk!

Martha tries not to think about the kiss as John leaves. She really does. But her mouth still feels fuzzy in a way that’s nearly impossible to ignore, as if she had just gotten a rather strong static shock there. She brings two fingers up to touch her lips pensively, and almost smiles at how they tingle.

But she can’t reminisce about it right now, she remembers, so she shakes her head minutely to remind her brain that people’s lives were at stake and she needed to focus, she can’t keep thinking about--

Well, she can’t think about it.

Martha goes straight to the Judoon, saying, “Now listen, I know who you’re looking for. She’s this woman, she calls herself Florence--”

The Judoon doesn’t seem to listen to her, much to her annoyance. Instead, it scans her. 

“Non-human. Wait. Non-human traits suspected. Non-human element confirmed. Authorize full scan. What are you? What are you?” 

It looks at the results, and grunts. “Human, traces of facial contact with nonhuman--” Martha crosses her arms. It didn’t need to  _ know  _ that! “--Continue the search.”

It gives Martha a small booklet. She peers down at it blankly. It’s written in alien. “What is this?” she asks.

“Compensation.”

* * *

He enters the MRI room, and congratulates himself on a job well done. He’d been right in his suspicions: Florence, the plasmavore, is indeed here, and she’s been very busy to boot. Lights light up and beepers beep and all sorts of things happen at once. 

All sorts of things happening at once when a villain is nearby is never good, which is pretty self-explanatory, really - ideally, John would have  _ nothing _ happen when a villain is around. It certainly would make things a lot less confusing, and then he could get them to evilly explain their plan in great detail and he wouldn’t have to strain to hear.

At least, that’s what he thinks. It’s not like he would know from experience, or anything. 

...Would he? He must admit, he’s been saying and remembering lots of bits and pieces of things that would concern anyone in their right mind. Images of prisons, other space ships, aliens, guns and bombs and swords. 

It’s hardly the time to ponder that now, though, as he needs to work on defeating these particular aliens with their spaceships and guns and bombs (eventually, if Florence is doing what he thinks she’s doing). 

If swords show up he thinks he might be in a bit over his head. 

John throws the door open dramatically, exclaiming “I need help!” in his most pathetic voice, as if he were on the verge of fainting. He swoons. “Please, there are these horrid things out there, like rhinos, but - oh, it hardly bears thinking about!” 

Florence barely takes the time to look up from her work before she waves her hand nonchalantly and says “Grab him.”

He loses the dramatic act and stands up straight, removing his hand from its expertly-placed position on his forehead. “Oh, hello.”

It’s funny, John hadn’t noticed that the other slab was in here. He definitely notices it now, though, since it’s holding onto his arm quite tightly. 

“Do you mind?” he asks, trying to tug away.

“Oh, don’t bother trying to escape my slab,” Florence calls from the controls, “People stronger than you have tried and failed. They were quite delicious in the end; their struggle did wonders for the flavor.”

“What do you--” he begins, but is cut off. For at that moment, the MRI scanner starts making sounds that remind John rather strongly of an old man with both asthma and pneumonia attempting to run a mile. Galileo had been quite the wild card, he thinks, even if he did almost collapse after a couple meters. He wonders for a second how he knows Galileo. “That doesn’t sound good,” he finishes.

“Oh, but it is,” says Florence, “It’s only making that noise because I’ve increased the magnetic setting to fifty-thousand Tesla, which is exactly what I want it to do.”

“And that’s a good thing?” 

“For me, yes,” she says sweetly, smiling disarmingly at him, “For everyone else within a 250,000 radius, no.”

“Oh.” he cocks his head. “Why?”

“Well,” she states patronizingly, “It’ll fry every living thing within that distance’s brainstems. Except for me, of course, safe in this lovely little room.” 

John hums, “But that would reach the Earth as well, wouldn’t it?” 

“Only the side facing the moon,” Florence comments lightly, “Everyone else will survive...call it my little gift.” she grins wolfishly, showing all her teeth.

“I see,” he says, frowning as if he’d been faced with a complex puzzle. “Well actually, I really don’t. Why would you do that?”

“With everyone dead, the Judoon ships will be mine to make my escape.” 

“Why, you’re talking as if you’re some sort of alien!” he says, pretending to be shocked.

_ Join the club,  _ he thinks.

“Quite so.”

“You must be joking!” he exclaims, smiling like she just told a joke. 

“I am not.”

He stares at her, wide eyed, before pursing his lips, pretending to be deep in thought. “So those rhinos out there...they’re looking for you?” 

“Indeed,” she smirks, as if she’s about to divulge a great secret, “But I’m hidden.” 

“Oh, I see... Maybe that’s why they increased their scans.” 

Florence whips her head to look at him, distracted from her work on the scanner. “They’re doing what?!” 

“Well, one of the rhinos said something along the lines of:” he deepens his voice to imitate the Judoon, “no sign of non-human. Must increase scans to setting two.”

“Then I must assimilate again,” she mutters to herself.

John pretends he didn’t quite catch her. “What was that?” 

“I must appear to be human,” she clarifies.

“You look human to me,” John comments.

“Yes, I would, wouldn’t I? But no, I have to seem human on the inside as well. Deep, deep down,” she reaches into her purse and pulls out a straw. John almost grimaces. That’ll probably hurt. 

“As in spiritually? I’m sure there are plenty of humans that would be willing to accept you into their faith.”

“You’re a very funny man--” she begins.

“Thank you,” he interrupts. 

“But that will not save you. Steady him!”

The slab forces him down to the floor roughly, and he grunts as the wind is knocked out of him. He doesn’t struggle, because this is what he wants. Hopefully Martha will figure it out, save the day. Just like Doctors do.

His train of thought halts. Why’d he capitalize doctor, just then, as if it were a proper noun? 

_ The definitive article, you might say _ . 

Florence prepares her straw, he can feel it hover just over his jugular. The hairs on his neck raise and he shivers. His heartsbeat intensifies with anticipation and it must be the sheer adrenaline or something, must be the fact that  _ he’s about to die _ , maybe the familiarity of it all triggers something, but a dam crumbles in his mind and he  _ remembers _ .

He remembers Susan and Ian and Barbara and Jamie and Sarah Jane and Romana and  _ Adric, oh Adric,  _ and Peri and Ace and “ _ it’s bigger on the inside!” _ and “ _ one day, I shall come back,”  _ and “ _ unlimited rice pudding!”  _ and there, above the tidal wave of recollection, there’s a single thought:

_ My tea  _ surely _ must be cold by now. _

Then, as a result of blood loss, the Doctor loses consciousness. 

* * *

Say what you will about the Judoon: that they’re dim, violent, unfeeling brutes who have no morals. You would be right, of course, they are indeed all of those things - but perhaps the most annoying thing about them, Martha thinks, is their incredible capability to  _ not listen _ . 

She begged with them, pleaded with them, vaguely threatened them, and yet the only reason they ended up finding Florence was because they remembered they hadn’t yet checked the MRI room. 

Florence is rapidly shoving something into her purse. Probably the straw. John is motionless on the floor. 

He isn’t breathing. 

Martha wonders how she’s breathing because she’s pretty sure her throat just closed up. She swallows thickly, somehow.

“Look at what you’ve done,” Florence accuses the Judoon, “This poor man just died of fright!” 

_ He can’t be dead. _

“Scan him,” the Judoon does just that, “Confirmation. Deceased.”

_ He is. _

Martha inhales a shuddering breath, “No, no, he can’t be,” as if in a daze she pushes blindly through the horde of Judoon, “Let me through...let me see him.” She kneels next to John. 

“Stop. Case closed,” a Judoon grunts.

He’s pale, as if the life had been sucked out of him. 

She supposes it had. 

“No, she--she killed him.” Martha points at Florence, “It was her, she murdered him!” she’s shouting, because they won’t listen otherwise.

“Judoon have no authority over human crime.” 

Martha wants to scream --  _ what’s the point of them, then?!  _ \-- instead, she states, “But she’s not human.”

“Oh, but I am. I’ve been catalogued,” Florence says innocently. Martha wants to slap that self-satisfied smirk off her face. 

“No you aren’t, you assimi--” her eyes widen. “Wait a minute, you drank his blood? John’s blood?” she grabs a scanner from a nearby Judoon and points it at Florence. 

“Oh, I don’t mind. Scan all you like.” She smiles, and Martha can see John’s blood, a deep sunset-orange, in between her teeth.

The scanner beeps. “Nonhuman.”

“But--what?” Florence’s face falls. 

“Confirm analysis.” 

“But it must be a mistake, surely, I mean, I’m human! I’m as human as they come!” 

Martha’s staring vacantly at John’s body. He can’t be dead, he  _ can’t _ . He just came back to life. “He gave his life,” she says, “He gave his life so they’d find you.” 

Florence just glances at her worriedly. There’s fear in her eyes. 

“Confirm. Plasmavore,” Relief washes over Martha. At least he’d get justice. “Charged with the crime of murdering the child princess of Patrival Regency Nine.”

“Well, she deserved it!” Florence yells, all traces of anxiety gone, replaced with a sort of resigned anger. “Those pink cheeks and those blonde curls and that simpering voice. She was begging for the bite of a plasmavore.”

“Then you confess?”

“Confess? Of course I do! I’m proud of it! Slab, stop them!” 

The slab rushes towards the Judoon, but is quickly fried with a blast from its gun. It spasms, and then falls to the floor, dead. 

“Verdict: guilty. Sentence: execution.”

In a last ditch effort, Florence runs behind the MRI screen and plugs something in. Electricity starts dancing across it in a way that leaves Martha very concerned.

“Enjoy your victory, Judoon, because you are going to burn with me! Burn in hell!” Florence pulls a lever, and is then immediately vaporized by four Judoon firing at her.

“Case closed.”

“What did she mean though, ‘burn with me’? The scanner shouldn’t be doing that, she’s done something!”

The Judoon scans it. “Scans detect lethal acceleration of monomagnetic pulse,” it says, too nonchalantly.

“Well do something! Stop it!” Martha pleads. 

“Our jurisdiction has ended. We will evacuate.” 

Martha is left almost speechless. “What? Y-you can’t just  _ leave _ it!”

The Judoon speaks into its communication device. “All units withdraw.”

They turn and go. 

“You can’t go! That thing’ll explode and it’s all your fault!” Martha yells.

They don’t listen.

_ Of course _ they don’t listen.

She turns back to look at John, who is still wholly lifeless. The lifeless tend to do that, really: remain lifeless.

_ But what if… _

Martha bites her lip, nodding to herself. Then, she starts performing CPR.

“One, two, three, four, five,” she counts to herself. 

If he can come back to life once, he can do it again. 

“One, two, three, four, five.” The origami heart in her pocket seems to burn her, and she berates herself for not remembering in her desperation. John has two hearts! She gets to work on the other one, pressing firmly on his chest despite her growing weakness -- the air must be almost completely out.

She takes one last lungful of air, and presses it to John’s lips. 

His eyes open and he startles awake with a jolt. 

“The scanner…” she warns, “She’s done something…” 

As she falls asleep, she isn’t afraid. John will take care of it. She trusts him. 

* * *

The Doctor wakes up. He’s alive, that’s nice. Always nice. Usually. But he won’t be for long if the scanner goes off. 

He hops to his feet and almost trips over the too-long legs of his sweatpants as he makes his way over to it, watching as it sparks and huffs and whirs. With one simple motion, he unplugs the cables, and the machine turns off.

The Doctor stands there and blinks for a moment, unused to something being so easy to fix - or, well, break. Then he shrugs to himself. 

That’s that, then.

With all the gentleness in the world, he picks Martha up bridal style, and walks past dozens of unconscious doctors and patients to get to a window. He watches as the Judoon get into their ships and take off. 

“Come on, come on come on come on, reverse it, Judoon, come on…” 

A raindrop hits the glass. If he weren’t using his respiratory bypass, and if there was actually oxygen, he would have sighed with relief. 

* * *

Martha wakes up for the second time with her head on John’s shoulder. She takes a panicked breath, gasping even though -- 

There’s oxygen. She exhales a breathy laugh and looks over to John, who’s looking at her. 

“We’re back,” she says.

“We are.” 

Martha grins widely at him, and he smiles a bit himself in response. There’s something worrying at him, though, she can tell. She’s about to ask about it, but he speaks before she can:

“Come with me,” he says, breathless, as if it had taken all his strength to pose that simple question. 

“Okay,” she responds, “Where?” 

A slow smile crawls onto his face. “You’ll see.” John grabs her hand and pulls her up, his eyes are glittering, almost, from whatever’s got him so excited. 

He leads her past the crowd of EMTs and policemen and reporters, expertly avoiding all of them until they reach the outdoors. 

Martha shades her eyes with her hand and looks up at the sky. The clear blue sky. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to think of rain the same way. “Never thought I’d see it again.”

“You doubted me?” he questions facetiously, grabbing her shoulders and maneuvering them around the crowd surrounding the ambulances. 

“You were dead!” she exclaims, and he laughs. 

“Fair point.” 

They start heading off, away from everything.

“John, where are we going, really?” She isn’t nervous, per se, just cautious.

“My ship,” he says happily. 

What?

“Your...ship?”

“Yes!” he dashes in front of her so he can look her in the eyes. His are so incredibly earnest that if she didn’t trust him already, she would now. “Doctor Jones, Martha, Martha, I remembered!” 

She frowns, before her eyes widen and she opens her mouth to ask, but she’s interrupted by a loud:

“Martha!”

Her head turns to look in the direction of the exclamation, and she smiles, momentarily forgetting about John. “Tish!” 

“Your sister?” he murmurs to her, and she nods. 

“Martha! Oh God, I thought you were dead! What happened? It was so weird, and the police won’t say anything, they haven’t a clue! And I tried phoning, Mum’s on her way now, but she can’t get through - they closed off all the roads, and --” Tish finally notices the Doctor. “Who’s this?” 

“Oh!” Martha pats his shoulder, “This is--”

“Call me the Doctor,” he cuts in, and Martha cocks her head at him, but doesn’t question it. For now.

“Oh, I’ve never met you,” Tish says.

“That’s because I’m a recent acquaintance.” 

“He was in the hospital with me,” Martha clarifies. 

“You have a very special sister, Tish,” he compliments, “Very brave,” Martha bites her lip and rolls her eyes, blushing. 

“Right…” Tish remarks suspiciously, looking between the pair of them. 

“Now, it’s been very nice meeting you, Miss Jones, but the two of us really must get going,” John grabs her shoulders and swerves her around. “Places to meet, people to see,” he pauses. “Wait. Scratch that, reverse it.” He throws back a disarming grin and starts walking off, Martha in tow. 

“Wait, I--” Tish starts, before something must’ve dawned on her, because she dons a sly smirk and says “Right, you two. Have fun then.”

Martha’s eyes widen, and she turns around to exclaim “Tish! It isn’t like that!” 

“Sure, Martha” Tish says, and Martha can hear the smile in her voice, and knows that she’ll probably get a call from her brother later about shagging people from disappearing hospitals. Whatever. 

“Isn’t like what?” 

Martha thanks God for his obliviousness. “Nothing,” she says too quickly, before changing the subject. “You said you remembered?” 

“Oh! Yes!” he brightens. “I remembered everything!”

“Well? Tell me about it then.” 

“Well, my name isn’t John Smith, it’s the Doctor.”

“The Doctor? Like, that’s your name? Just ‘The Doctor’?”

“Yes, yes, exactly.” He halts in the middle of the sidewalk in front of an alleyway. “Everything else, well, I think it’ll be quite easier to show you, rather than tell.” 

“Right,” Martha says. 

They end up entering the alleyway and standing in front of a blue box the size of a closet.

Maybe he  _ did  _ want to shag her, after all. 

“Welcome, Doctor Martha Jones, to the TARDIS.”


	5. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of drama happens in this one, fellas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im all settled in to college now :) sorry for the late update!!!
> 
> also this chapter jumps around a bit o.o but its cos i need to Establish Things so :/

“To the what?” Martha questions, and wonders if John - _the Doctor_ \- remembering just meant that he would be even more mad than he was before.

“It’s my ship,” the Doctor clarifies, and because Martha had just been to the moon, she shrugs and accepts it, for the most part. She’s found that going along with whatever he says works best, in the long run, even if it doesn’t make much sense at all.

“Bit snug, isn’t it?” she comments, and he shines a very self-satisfied smirk her way. 

“Not quite,” he starts to pat himself down, as if looking for something, and then peers closely at the bottoms of his feet like there should be something significant there. All that was there, however, was a layer of dirt. “I should have shoes on,” he mumbles to himself.

Martha’s rather inclined to agree. “You looking for something?” 

“Yes,” says the Doctor, somewhat absentmindedly, rummaging through his pockets, “The key. Usually it’s in my shoe, but…”

“But your stuff is still back at the hospital,” she finishes. 

“Unfortunately,” he shrugs. “I’ll have to go back for it later. Right now, it seems that using the spare would be prudent.”

“What, do you keep one above the door, or something?” 

“Exactly,” he says slyly, before clasping his hands together and beckoning her with his head to stand on them, “It’s in a cubbyhole above the ‘P’.”

Martha worries for a moment if he’ll be able to hold her weight, before sighing and stepping up anyway. She feels about for it for a few seconds before grabbing it and coming back down. The smile he gives her is so bright it’s almost blinding, and before she knows it the key is plucked out of her hand and thrust into the lock.

And then the door is open and the Doctor is inside. “Come on in!” he calls, and his voice echoes far too much for such a small box. 

She peeks inside, and she blinks, and then she stops peeking inside.

Because what she’d just seen was impossible. There were ancient tomes piled on sagging shelves stretching towards the ceiling, picture books and comic books and every book in between stacked perilously in teetering pillars. Candlesticks and candelabras perched on nearly every surface, melted wax hanging from the sockets like stalactites. A sunken old armchair sat next to a tiffany lamp on an occasional table, and a few feet away a gramophone played a blurry tune. One corner was littered with clocks, another corner was littered with plants, and in one corner there was a _car_. And in the middle, perched atop a dais, arose a column emitting a cool blue light. Surrounding it were six industrial metal posts, reaching up over the column like spider legs.

Oh, and the whole thing was bigger on the inside. 

Martha stumbled out, as if she’d been kicked back. 

She knew that its outside dimensions were no larger than a small shed, yet she still peered around the corners - just to make absolutely sure she wasn’t being pranked, or something. 

All evidence pointed towards it being very real indeed.

“It’s bigger on the inside!” she exclaimed

The Doctor was standing by the large column, pressing some buttons on the hexagonal console and looking very smug. “Oh, you noticed that, did you?” 

Martha didn’t humor him with a response, still rather in awe of the whole thing. The Doctor had meandered to a side table and was looking forlornly down at a cup of tea. “Cold,” he laments, “And not even half-drank.” 

She stared wondrously at the ceiling, which wasn’t so much a ceiling as it was an open sky full of stars and swirling nebulae. _Must be holographic_ , she thinks, _you don’t see that sort of color with the light pollution._ “How _?_ ” she finally asks, her voice a mere whisper.

“The old girl is dimensionally transcendental,” he explains, putting the teacup down.

That explained a lot, actually. “I see,” she says. 

“You do?” 

“Yeah. I took physics, and the words “dimensionally transcendental” -- sorta self-explanatory, isn’t it?”

The Doctor seemed a little put-out by this. Probably wanted to be able to explain it to her, or something. “I suppose.” 

“Doctor?” 

He hummed.

“Why are you showing me all this?” 

The Doctor peers at her, owlishly. “You said you wanted to come with me.”

Martha stares. “I thought you meant, like, to get coffee, or something.”

“Oh, we can get coffee, Doctor Jones. We can get some _bona fide--”_ he says it in the proper latin pronunciation, and with great flourish, “--Turkish coffee from the 1800s, or retrieve coffee-sodas from a distant planet hundreds of years from now,” he says, “Just say the word and we’re there.” 

Well, he said it was his ship. He just didn’t explain the full scope of what that meant. “So this thing then, your... _TARDIS_ , it travels in time?” 

“Don’t call the TARDIS a _thing_ , Martha,” he chastised, “But yes, she travels in time and space. All across the universe. Frontwards and backwards and sidewards and Möbius strip-wards and--”

“I get it, Doctor,” she laughs, and she considers it. She really considers it.

Anywhere in time and space, with the Doctor. It’ll be hair-raising, of that she has no doubt; there’s something about him that tells her he’s incapable of _not_ getting mixed into things he shouldn’t. The things she could learn, the people she could help…

But no, she _can’t_ . She has exams. Her brother’s birthday party is _tomorrow_. She can’t.

“I have exams--” she starts, but he cuts her off, a mischievous glimmer in his eyes.

“Ah - time machine, remember? We can go anywhere and any _when_ and be back here in a second.” 

Well. That puts an end to her excuses, she supposes. Her mouth snaps closed. 

“Time machine. Right,” she’s not even really sure she _believes_ that - but surely, if a small shed can be bigger on the inside, it could also travel in time, right? All this was rather out of her purview. “My brother’s birthday is tomorrow. Wait ‘till then.”

“But we don’t need to wait,” he said, sounding plaintive and pointing at the controls, “Like I said, time machine.”

“I know, Doctor,” she steps onto the dais, “But I need time to pack, you know. Sleep, also,” she tacks on, yawning, “I’m exhausted.” 

“You humans and your sleep,” remarked the Doctor derisively, his eyes mirthful behind his contempt. 

“Hey!” Martha scoffs, “Are you telling me you aren’t the slightest bit tired from that whole moon business?” The Doctor said nothing in response. “Hm?”

“Well, maybe a little,” he admitted in a mutter. 

“Right,” she nodded, motioning towards the door, “So...tomorrow, then?” 

“Tomorrow then,” he confirms with a soft smile.

“And you’ll still be here?” 

“I’ll still be here.”

Martha grins, biting her lip and nodding, “Good.”

And then she’s out the door, shutting it with a loud creak. 

* * *

Martha Jones leaves, and the Doctor stands there for a moment in silence, staring at the door. 

_Right,_ the Doctor thinks, freeing himself from his reverie, clapping his hands. _First things first_ , _I believe a wardrobe change is in order._ He peers down at the Greenpeace t-shirt and too-big sweatpants he has on, his lack of shoes. _Yes, definitely in order._

As he makes his way to his closet - which, really, is a closet as much as the crop planets of Bellatrix 5 were a small backyard garden - the TARDIS hums at him, aggravated, prickling the symbiotic link between them in his mind. 

“Yes, yes, I know,” he tells her, waving his hand dismissively, “I’ll figure it out. When do I not?” the Doctor shoots an arrogant wink towards the walls.

She beeps, affronted.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up,” he mumbles. “I missed you too, by the way. Do I get no sympathy? I almost died you know. I _did_ die, in fact. How do you like the face?”

The lights turn a warm, affection orange, before darkening to a deep red hue.

“I will _deal_ with the Master. Right now, however, he seems to be a nonissue! Probably found a lovely group of slugs to fraternize with who will ultimately betray him.”

The TARDIS buzzes. 

“You know what a slug is,” he says, rolling his eyes. 

She chirps - her way of laughing, and the Doctor allows a smile to make its way onto his face before he’s chuckling as well.

There’s a moment then, where she sends him a wave of fondness, worry, relief, all at once, and it feels rather like receiving a hug. 

“I’m glad you’re alright too, old girl,” he says warmly, before looking down the infinite stretch of corridor he was traveling down, “Now If you would be so kind as to move the closet here so I don’t trip on these sweatpants wandering down hallways, it would be much appreciated.” 

* * *

The Doctor examines himself in the mirror. The bottle-green frock coat he’d picked out was an excellent choice, he thinks. It’s comfortable, the velvet a very pleasant fabric. Nice to the touch. Plus, it gave him a sort of sophisticated air, or something. He thinks it does, at least - he’s hardly the one to judge such things. Maybe that’s what he’ll try for this regeneration, though: sophistication. Manners, being a gentleman. Gentleperson. Not pulling the sort of thing he’d done last go ‘round. 

...Poor Ace. 

He shakes his head, clearing that particular line of thinking. His curls bounce as he does so, which he rather likes. They weren’t quite like his fourth or sixth body, but maybe that’s for the best. They were still very kinetic, try as he might he can’t get them to stay totally still; they wave about slightly, like streamers in the wind. Hopefully no one notices. 

The Doctor leans in closer to the mirror. 

Bright blue - green? - blue eyes, impeccable eyebrows (if he does say so himself), long nose, slender jaw. It’ll do, he thinks.

Yes, it’ll do very much. 

The Doctor does up his cravat and tucks it into his embroidered waistcoat, then sets off to retrieve his stuff from the hospital. 

* * *

“It’s gone?” he asks the reception woman. She smiles apologetically.

“Sorry sir, someone came in to get it just a half-hour before you did: a man, dressed all in black leather, like a motorcyclist or something - he even had the helmet on! You know him?”

The Doctor frowned - what was a slab doing collecting his sonic screwdriver? His TARDIS key? Something was very wrong. Very wrong indeed. He needs to get back to his ship. “Hm? Oh, yes,” he lies, trying to find the quickest way out of this discussion, “Yes, I know him, yes.”

“Oh, good.” She seems to deliberate on something, debate on whether or not she should speak, “I should let you know though, sir,” she began in a clandestine whisper, “The body’s missin’! It just, poof!” she mimes something exploding with her hands, “Disappeared. Last night, before all the stuff with the,” she mouths _aliens_.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he says, not paying attention at all and still wholly deep in thought. He decides that now would be as good a time as any to hop out of the conversation, and he begins to head for the door, calling out, “You’ve been a great help, thank you!” as he goes.

* * *

Martha decides to ditch her brother’s party early, for one very simple reason:

She just didn’t want to be there anymore. 

Martha believes this reasoning valid, because no one would want to be present at an event where your divorced parents fought over your dad’s young blonde girlfriend. 

Honestly, though, it’s a simple fact of life that you should never invite a divorced couple over to the same place, unless you want to be very, very, _very_ uncomfortable the whole time. And - to be fair to her, she _did_ stay for a while, and she got pictures and ate cake and had a drink and all that. So there. 

They had started talking politics when she left. Annalise - her father’s girlfriend - had said she supported Harold Saxon, to which her mum commented that that was the first smart thing she had ever heard leave her mouth, which made her dad get all offended and defensive, which made Martha excuse herself and vacate the premises as fast as she possibly could.

She knocks on the TARDIS door with a duffle bag full of clothes and a backpack full of textbooks and notes, feeling very relieved she was going to take a break from all... _this_. Family drama. Frankly, she was sick of dealing with all of it.

The Doctor lets her in, wearing an utterly anachronistic ensemble that she couldn’t help but comment on.

“What’s with the coat?” she asks.

“Do you like it?” he responds, “You said Victorian, didn’t you? Though I did choose to go for Edwardian in the end.”

As much as she wants to complain about it, it does look very dashing. In a Byronic sort of way. “Looks nice,” she says, “It suits you.” 

The Doctor smiles. “Thank you,” he says bashfully. Then, like a switch being flicked, he turns very serious. “Martha Jones, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Her blood runs cold. Is he not going to let her come with him or something? “What?”

“Something very insidious is stirring in London as we speak. I’m worried my old arch-nemesis has returned.”

Of _course_ he has an arch-nemesis. “Yeah?” she responds, because how else do you respond to that? “Um, what can we do?” 

“We can stop him, of course,” says the Doctor, rushing over to the console. “The TARDIS managed to conserve some of his residue. I’m running a few diagnostics on it now.”

“Residue?” 

“Well, you see…” he sighs, looking for a way to formulate an explanation, “The Master - I - We - let me see...this is all very complex.” Martha raises her eyebrows at him. “The Master and I, we’re both of the same species: Time Lords, we’re called. And, as Time Lords, we both have thirteen lives.”

Time Lords, huh? “Like how a cat has nine lives?” 

“That only applies to the cats originating from Felinsis, but yes. Something like that. The Master, he used up all of his, and he died, and he should have died permanently. But he found a way to cheat death, somehow, and as I was taking him back to my home planet, he managed to escape as this...moving slime. Hence the residue.”

“I see.” Only vaguely.

The TARDIS dinged, like a toaster going off, and he looked down at something. “Ah, it appears he’s in London.” 

Martha drops her things and goes to look at the console. The interface is written in circular symbols that flicker across the screen faster than she can quite take them in. Not like she’d be able to understand them if she could, anyway. She glances at the Doctor. “London?” she prompts, “That’s not far.” 

“No, though the old girl can’t triangulate his position completely - I can’t see his exact location.” 

“Why not?” 

“It’s like something’s messing with the signal, making it seem like he’s in two different places at once.” 

“And that’s...impossible, right?”

“Should be impossible,” he responds, still distracted by whatever the screen was telling him. 

“Why don’t you just go to one of the spots it shows he is, then go to the next one if he’s not there?” 

“Hm?” he turns to look at her attentively, and Martha realizes that he hadn’t been paying attention to what she’d been saying at all. She crosses her arms and leans against the console. 

“I said--” she began, but he cut her off, grabbing her shoulders excitedly.

“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed, “It’s obvious, really! I’ll just go to one location, and if he’s not there I’ll go to the other one!”

Martha pursed her lips. “Right,” she said. “You do that, and I’ll go unpack my things then, shall I?”

“Oh yes, yes,” that spurns the Doctor into action, as he begins fiddling with buttons and levers. Martha realizes that his coat sleeves are a smidgeon too long; they hang down over the heel of his palm in a way she’s very, very hesitant to call cute. “Let me get a room set up for you.”

* * *

Apparently, the TARDIS is much bigger on the inside than she’d thought. The large double doors leading out of the console room opened to a winding hallway of Axminster carpet. The way to her room - though the directions were subject to change, the Doctor had said - was to go right, then right again, then left, then down the middle, ‘round the bend, up the stairs, and to the right once more. Her door is labeled with her name written in a fancy curlicue scrawl.

“Here we are,” says the Doctor, opening the door for her. “After you.” 

Martha enters to find a room twice the size of her bedroom at home. In the middle sits a wide double poster bed with a deep red canopy. Against the far right wall is a bookshelf and a writing desk that looks positively ancient, and against the left is a large antique wardrobe. 

“It’s nice,” the Doctor says, as if he’s seeing it the first time, “I’m glad that desk is finally getting some use; hardly anyone ever goes into the conservatory anymore.”

“I love it,” Martha breathes, hardly as nonchalant as the Doctor was, “It’s like a room in a castle or something.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he replies warmly. “We can add more furnishings later, if you want. I have a bean bag room.” 

“Yeah, sure,” she wanders over to peer into the ensuite, hardly paying attention to whatever it was the Doctor’s saying. 

“Go ahead and get settled then, Doctor Jones,” the Doctor said from the doorway, “I’ll be in the console room.” 

“Okay,” Martha said, and the Doctor disappeared.

She sighed, excited, then hurriedly began to unpack.

* * *

“The Master’s in Downing Street,” the Doctor says once Martha gets back - the way to the console room was far shorter on the way back; she’d practically left her room and immediately ended up there - “Or, well, possibly, anyway. What’s he doing in Downing Street?”

Martha shrugs, hopping up to stand a respectable distance away from him on the dais. “We could go find out,” she suggests.

“I like your chutzpah, Doctor Jones,” he says, then cranks a lever and the TARDIS jolts violently. They both go flying to the side. “That was unexpected,” the Doctor wheezed. 

The column in the center pumps up and down, and the TARDIS seems to heave with it, creating a loud, unhealthy-sounding groaning. “What about that was unexpected?” she asks from the floor.

“Usually she doesn’t buck like that,” the Doctor rolls smoothly to his feet to check something on the console. “Not unless she’s mad at me.” 

“So the groaning’s normal, then?” 

“You can hardly expect traveling through the Vortex to be a soundless venture, can you?” the Doctor shouts back as a wave of sparks sputter from somewhere. 

“I wouldn’t know, would I?” 

The Doctor doesn’t respond, for he’s busy dashing around to type in various commands and push various buttons and pull on a _Bop It_ device that was duct taped in. “This is very, very strange. It’s just a short hop, I don’t understand why she’s behaving like this.” 

Martha moves to get up, but the TARDIS swerves and she’s thrown back down again. The Doctor manages to stay upright, and he pulls down what looks like an old TV from the ceiling. “That’s impossible,” he mutters. 

Then, with one last shower of sparks, everything stops. Somewhere in the distance a bell tolls once. 

Very carefully, Martha stands up on wobbling legs. “What’s impossible?” 

“We’re in London,” the Doctor says.

“Isn’t that good?” 

“In 1599,” he finishes. 

_Oh._ “Oh.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shakespeare code happens next guys.....

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on [tumblr!](%E2%80%9Ceightdoctor.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D)
> 
> if you spot something that seems like a withnail & i reference, there's a 100% chance it is


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